Victim Wants White Supremacist Attacker Spared From Death Penalty

Stroman raided Dallas-area gas stations in search of Muslims to kill. He shot and killed Hindu immigrant Vasudev Patel, thinking he was Muslim, and Waqar Hasan, a father of four from Pakistan, while they were still behind their convenience store counters.

Rais Bhuyian (pictured), then 26 years old, was luckier. Stroman asked him where he was from, but before Bhuyian could answer, he shot him the face with a shotgun. Bhuyian played dead, recovered, and is now blind in one eye.

Surprisingly, Bhuyian has since started a wide-ranging campaign to get his attacker off Death Row, arguing that his death would not solve anything.

Bhuyian is practicing the art of forgiveness.

“I forgave Mark Stroman many years ago,” he writes on his blog. “I believe he was ignorant, and not capable of distinguishing between right and wrong, otherwise he wouldn’t have done what he did.”